Monday, February 18, 2013

Premium Rush: The Hero Rides a Bike

American cinema has long celebrated the hero who drives a car, and car chases have become a staple of American action films. But tonight I watched the first film I'd ever seen where the hero not only rides a bike, but engages in "bike chases" which are as exciting as anything a gas-guzzler has to offer.

The movie is called "Premium Rush" and it stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a New York City bicycle courier and law school graduate, who prefers the fast-paced, car-dodging world of city bike delivery to the more boring world of suits and offices. He rides a fixed-gear bike, which has become synonymous with hipsters, but he rides it with a gallantry and coolness that it feels almost like an art. He doesn't like brakes because they fail and cause accidents. He prefers the total control, and total abandon, of a fixed gear bike.

I won't go into the plot too much. It involves a corrupt cop (which we're probably going to be seeing a lot more of in movies), a hawala money transfer, an immigrant child, and an underground network of bike riders.

But what I appreciated most about the movie is that the hero rides a bike. As someone who does not own a car, does not want to own a car, probably (hopefully) never will own a car, I could relate. I ride a bicycle not for recreation or exercise, but for transportation. And, like the bike couriers in the film, I often feel like a pariah in the world of American transportation. On my morning commute to Cal State Fullerton, I can choose to either RISK MY LIFE and ride on Chapman (which has no bike lanes) or I can be that annoying person who rides on the sidewalk. Those are my choices: death or annoying. In short...it's a car's world. For now.

But the world is changing. I dream of the day when bikes are the norm, when the only fuel we need to put in our vehicles is our own calories. That's the kind of world I want to live in. Bravo, Premium Rush, for giving an outcast like me a hero.